Self-Publishing: Carnival of the Indies Issue #26

Welcome to this issue of the Carnival of the Indies blog carnival. This issue is for November, 2012. We welcome your submissions on topics related to writing, self-publishing, book design or marketing books.

A collection of outstanding articles recently posted to blogs, your reading here will be richly rewarded.

See the end of this post for links to submit your blog posts for the next carnival, or for participating Bloggers and Featured Bloggers to grab your sidebar badges. Thanks to everyone who participated.

Steven Saus (@uriel1998) presents Social Media Is Dead: Why Independent Creators Need To Get Back To RSS and E-Mail NOW. posted at ideatrash, saying, “Social media companies (particularly Facebook and Twitter) seem to be in the process of going for the easy, big bucks of big media companies, and are willing to sacrifice what made their services popular. Independent creators, while still using these services, cannot rely on them any longer. We must be able to reach our audience through internet-standard tools like e-mail and RSS.”

Book Design and Production

Walt Shiel presents Are Long Subtitles Bad? posted at Making It Easy, saying, “Many people seem to think subtitles are only for nonfiction or need to be clever and catchy, but that ignores one of the most important aspects of subtitles in our internet-centric world — discoverability.”

Indie Author

Laura Pepper Wu presents “How do I get more traffic to my site?” posted at 30 Day Books, saying, “When you first start out blogging with no audience, it can be discouraging – that’s often why a lot of bloggers give up. Here are six easy ways to drive more traffic to your website.”

Marketing and Selling Your Books

Randy Ross presents Facebook Fan Pages: A Waste of Time (and Money)? posted at The Loneliest Planet, saying, “After a year of developing my Facebook Fan Page, I have more than 2,000 fans, a shopping cart for a self-published book (haven’t sold one, yet), and dozens of applications. Last week, I spent $20 to promote one of my posts to 10,000 people: Unfortunately, many of them turned out to be from outside the U.S. and many didn’t list English as their default language. Has Facebook been worth the time?”

Marcy Kennedy presents Is Genre Dying? posted at Marcy Kennedy’s Blog, saying, “Superstar literary agent Donald Maass says that genre is dying, but the four qualities he says make for bestsellers are actually a description of how genre is evolving, rather than dying.”

James J Parsons presents Scrivener on the Go posted at Speaking to the Eyes, saying, “A post about using Scrivener on computers other than your main machine through a USB stick–a convenient way to write on the go.”

Well, that wraps up this issue. I hope you enjoy some of the great articles here, and let other people interested in self-publishing know about the Carnival—Use the share buttons below to Tweet it, Share it on Facebook, Plus-1 it on Google+, Link to it! The next issue is December 30, 2012 and the deadline for submissions will be December 20, 2012. Don’t miss it! Here are all the links you’ll need:

Joel Friedlander is a self-published author, an award-winning book designer, and an accomplished blogger. He's the founder of the Self-Publishing Roadmap online training course, and a frequent speaker at industry events where he talks to writers about how the new tools of publishing can help them reach and inspire their readers.

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